Things come to an end
by bhut
Summary: S2 finale AU - Palomas didn't die, Simmons didn't get eaten by a rock, but Phil and May are still having problems. Fortunately, there's Natasha to lend an ear, right?
1. Chapter 1

**Things come to an end**

 _Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Marvel™._

The two women who were sitting in the 'all-you-can-eat-buffet' (decorated as some sort of a lodge – nature paintings, deer heads, and stuffed birds – the works, really) were both alike and different, and not just in the obvious way. Both were fit, toned, slim, powerful and exotic – one being a redhead from Eastern Europe, the other – of a more Chinese origin (i.e. Far East). Both were moving similarly, staring at each other similarly, yet – were different, no matter what.

"So how did you like venison? And the sweet cheese pastry?" Melinda Quilian May asked her former co-worker, Natasha Romanoff.

"They were fine, thank you," Natasha replied primly as she wiped her lips. (Usually, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents ate Oriental or Greek food when it came to take-out; Melinda couldn't stand the Oriental kitchen, ironically, and neither woman was a big fan of Greek cooking, so here they were, sitting beneath stuffed birds in some sort of a New English shindig instead. "Now about your question – no, I didn't leave because of Kara Lynn."

Natasha blinked and went to get more of the sweet cheese pastry (hey, she was not the one paying for it, and the spare weight would be exercised off – believe it). When she returned, she took a bite and indicated for May to continue. The (somewhat) older woman raised a brow.

"What?" Natasha asked in faux-surprise. "We booked this place for several hours and time isn't yet up. Start elaborating – _please_?"

"There's nothing to elaborate," Melinda shrugged. "We managed to liberate Palomas from Ward, shall we say? I suspect that Ward may've discarded his former ally as he did with us, but this doesn't matter." She paused. "What matters is that Palomas is firmly loyal to Ward and has no intention of changing her attitude, S.H.I.E.L.D. or no S.H.I.E.L.D."

"So why did you take her in, in the first place? I hate to talk like this about a former co-worker, but if she's being unreasonable, a day or two in the brig wouldn't hurt-"

"My thoughts exactly," May nodded, "for I have read her old file, which described her as somewhat arrogant – not unlike Morse, really. I do not like Morse much either, but she is not important right now. Personally, I suspected that the woman was still brainwashed – that Ward just took what Whitehall had left behind and worked on it, so all that was needed was a deprogramming session or several, plus some therapy provided by Andrew or one of his coworkers, and we'd get over her hump – or at least the initial hurdles – quickly enough. After all, that was why Phil gave her the option, right?"

"Right."

"Wrong! On all counts. Palomas is unpleasant, even toxically so, but she was not brainwashed. She is interested in Ward, but only, I suspect, to have a reason to go against the agency. She knew _exactly_ what she was saying when she confronted both Jemma Simmons and Skye, and clearly had no interest, or appreciation, of working for S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Again, some time in the brig, some other application of the 'stick', some other application of the 'carrot', and the worst of her attitude would be gone. She would be more willing to cooperate or to negotiate," Natasha shrugged. "Of course, she might also escape, but she isn't that formidable – you would catch her before she got far, mask or no mask." A thoughtful pause. "That's why Coulson wanted her in the first place, right? Because otherwise, she isn't that better than Morse, let alone you."

"Exactly! I was quite ready to propose the plan to Fitz and Simmons, that they might figure out a way to separate Palomas from the mask, plus repair her face and let her go," Melinda nodded, "but I'm getting ahead of myself. As I said, Palomas was surly and unpleasant at best – to say nothing about uncaring. But, and therein lies the true problem, it was reciprocated."

"Say what?"

"Let me start again, from the top. When I heard that Palomas was being difficult, I assumed that she actually had agreed to work for us, that Phil had given her a bunch of options and she chose S.H.I.E.L.D. as the one that was best for her, so now she was being obnoxious or had problems with the remnants of her brainwashing. I was wrong. It was not Phil at his best; it was old S.H.I.E.L.D. at its worse – I don't like Palomas, I really don't, but the way Coulson handled her? 'Ward doesn't need you, so we're taking you in, end of story. You're going to be working for us from now on' – anyone's hackles can be raised; I mean, not even Obama was able to pull this crud over Americans for long, and Phil isn't Obama."

Natasha just blinked, as her old friend became unusually talkative (especially for her).

"Look," Melinda sighed, "Palomas doesn't want to be in S.H.I.E.L.D. after her Hydra trials; she doesn't appear to be sharing our values – and she honestly told Phil so. Yet instead of locking her in a cell, and starting on figuring out a way to separate her from the mask, fix her face and let her go, (if she doesn't change her mind, but I wouldn't bet on that), he just told her what I already said, and handed her over to Simmons, who promptly got her head ripped off by the other woman, as I mentioned before. Skye too. This was where I came in and realized what the problem truly was."

Natasha was truly the silent one now, staring at May very attentively.

"The problem," May said slowly, "is what kind of man Coulson _is_. He comes across as warm, kind, caring – a father-figure, but he is just pretending to be that sort of a person, for he was always a recruiter to Fury; a 'good cop' to whoever was playing the 'bad cop', such as I. In reality, he was no better than the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s 'old guard', as I should've realized, when after working with me for years he cut me off after Bahrain when I relocated myself to administration."

"He just wanted to give you space-"

"For _seven_ years? Not even a birthday card – and then he remembers me when he was handed a new toy and a new lease on life. Fair enough, I followed him blindly, for I still thought of him as a warm family man, and he certainly was like that at first, even coercing me along into the role of a den mother or someone like that. And I complied – because I believed in him."

"So what went wrong? Hydra?"

"Yes, Ward did piss on Coulson's dream, but it was Coulson himself who gave up on it. Leaving aside the unprofessional way that Ward was treated, the fact was that ever since he had become the director, Coulson began to slowly stop being the man he was on the Bus, and began to become the sort of man who practically press-ganged Palomas into working for us. Not good."

"Are you sure?" Natasha asked quietly. "You may be prejudiced."

"Were those seven years after Bahrain prejudice or Hydra, Romanoff? Coulson pulled in Palomas without caring about what makes her tick; he does not really care that unlike Hall or Streiten Palomas is not going to bottle her misery up inside, but instead will spread it out – a lot; after all, he just sold S.H.I.E.L.D. to other people – nothing more. And now that he is actually in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D., this is not the right tool for the job. Just look at the Iliad – many people died because Coulson pushed his plan through. I did not like the late Gonzales, but the fact that he died because of Coulson's plan, makes my dislike irrelevant. Mack – that is agent Mackenzie – is still pushing for reforms in S.H.I.E.L.D., so does agent Wheeler. If I get back to S.H.I.E.L.D., I will support them. Tell this to Fury, would you?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Natasha replied loftily, fooling neither herself nor Melinda.

"Yes, no," the other woman told Natasha. "I got onto the Bus as Fury's secret spy, and got thrown into the 'brig' for that by Coulson. If it was not for Hydra...but even thinking about this is wrong. That said, I am not having a repeat performance without Fury's signature and paperwork, I am supporting the opposition, but not doing it for Fury. Got it?"

"Yes," Natasha said thoughtfully.

"Great. Now do you want spirits or brandy before we go?"

"Hmm," Natasha looked thoughtfully at the wine list. "You know, I wanted to try this brand since Hungary..."

"And this concludes my report," Natasha told Fury as the latter was having his own lunch (in Singapore, eating chicken satay and mango salad). "I don't know what has bit her-"

"Unrequited love," Fury said matter-of-factly. "May loved Coulson, but he didn't love her back – she just isn't his type. Plus, she never pushed the envelope, so he might've remained largely oblivious to it; at least until Loki had killed him and we brought him back."

Natasha just stared. "All this time," Fury continued again, "May stayed in S.H.I.E.L.D. because of this reason, and that made her rather unhappy, and it got worse after Bahrain – and for the obvious reason. I thought...I messed it up, I confess. I talked to her, she said that she chose S.H.I.E.L.D., so I got touched, I suppose, and didn't press the issue when she continued to self-destruct, or at least – to self-deconstruct. She _was_ the Cavalry, true, but after the seven years of self-imposed exile this legend got largely, well, legendary: a hero who does the unthinkable and prevails is a different story from the hero who still does it and crawls into the wilderness to sulk and refuse all the help. Yet I couldn't blame her – I blame myself; I should've gotten involved more and helped her figure out where she wants to go now that things between her and Coulson took turn for the worse. The Bus helped her do that, actually, save that now this path is clearly _not_ with S.H.I.E.L.D., but you know what? She has earned it and _I'm_ not dragging her back into S.H.I.E.L.D. if she doesn't want to."

"So, now what?"

"Now, Coulson is still in charge, but if the whole assembly/shared leadership thing doesn't die, I'll look into it," Fury looked onto the photo that depicted Phil Coulson and Melinda May, back when they were younger. Back then, the two agents were almost holding hands and smiling at the camera – the photo was taken under unofficial circumstances, after all. "It's funny though, how sometimes I can be really wrong. I honestly thought that the two of them would work it out by now, and hoped that the Bus would be the way to do it. Boy, did it backfire." And he said nothing else on that matter.

End

 **AN – basically, at the end of S2 all of the couples (not just SkyeWard) fell into disarray and fell apart. What happened to Phil and Mel was not that different from Skye and Grant – in both cases there is the 'other man' on the horizon...but that is still better than Fitz's case, who lost Jemma to an alien rock. Hopefully, S3 will resolve the situation, but for now, here is my take on the thing; it is AU, KL is alive and Simmons is not in a rock, but things still are not well for our agents...**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 _Disclaimer: see previous chapter._

The next time Natasha saw Coulson – or rather, the first time in a long while, he was in his new office, looking rather worse for wear, emotionally and mentally at least.

"What?" he glared at the redhead, before realizing who she was. "What," he repeated in a different tone. "What gives?"

"I just want to talk," Natasha said quietly, realizing that the normally mild-mannered and even-tempered man was neither at the moment.

"About Ward?"

"...No. About May, actually. Why would I want to talk about this ex-agent?"

"My bad," Coulson grimaced. "I just had several bad weeks, lately-"

"Because of May?" Natasha asked, but got a very peculiar glare instead.

"How much did she tell you?" Coulson asked, sounding bristly – and briskly too.

"Everything," Natasha confessed.

"Ah," Coulson leaned back, defeated. "And she's right, at least to a point, you know? I do not live her – not the way I loved Audrey. We were friends, until recently, and I thought that it would be enough, but apparently it was not. Melinda wanted more – more than I could honestly give her, and now we're all paying the price."

"All?"

"We miss her – me, Skye, Fitz and Simmons, even Hunter and the others. She _was_ an important part of the team, Natasha-"

"Yes, Fury explained it to me. She was something of a den mother-"

"Yes, she was becoming something of a den mother – and I'm not sure anymore that she liked it," Coulson nodded. "There's a passage in _Hamlet_ about how we tend to change, that we may not always stay the same person that we were at first – and we may not always like it, if we're to go by the subtext in the passage."

"...Are you using Shakespeare as an explanation?!" Natasha stared at her former co-worker as if he had hulked-out instead.

"Between Fitz and Simmons, Hunter and Morse, I became quite familiar with the Bard – and I like him, at least to an extent," Coulson nodded wryly. "But we are getting off track – my bad. I was trying to explain that May was changing, and as far as _I_ thought, that she was changing for the better. It seems that she disagreed."

"Because of Palamas?"

"Palamas is just an agent who had some very bad time lately, and that left her personality very short-fused – but she _is_ working well enough with the other agents, including Skye and the FitzSimmons, though she is avoid Morse and Hunter, BTW. Frankly, this does not make her too unusual by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s standards – but that was not Melinda's problem with her. Melinda actually tried to intimidate her into submissiveness – and for all the wrong reasons. Just like me, Melinda was become older, more, well, human – and apparently she didn't like it as much it as I have thought."

"She wanted to please you-"

"I _know_ ," Coulson said miserably, "and I thought that the two of us had an understanding, especially before Puerto Rico – but I was wrong. May was wrong too – but in a different fashion, and when we both figured that out, things fell apart. In private, but very spectacularly, too."

Natasha, realizing the need for a sounding board, just nodded in an encouraging sort of way and Coulson took the bait, as expected – sort of.

"Melinda is the nothing or all sort of person," he continued. "Between that and the fact that Skye _did_ get the best of her back when the whole mess with the InHumans began, she sort of collapsed. Belay that – she just collapsed. She tried to do what she had done before, _after_ Bahrain, but it did not work – in part because of me, but in part because she did not want to. She and I were growing apart, as I expected us to, but it went worse than I have expected."

"You expected to grow apart?" Natasha stared at the man.

"Yes. I do not love her – Andrew does. Melinda needs love in her life; Andrew can give it to her, while I cannot. I loved Audrey – still do, I suppose. I just, just expected that Melinda would bring Andrew into the fold instead – but it backfired. So be it. I cannot really do anything about it – not while Melinda is angry at me, you know?"

There was a pause as both he and Natasha thought this over.

"So how are you handling this?" Natasha finally decided to ask the obvious.

"Not so good – but not bad enough to beg her to come back," Coulson shook his head. "We have been abandoned by one of ours before, and under much worse circumstances too. Compared to Ward's betrayal, May's rejection is not so bad, just rather immature – but it is still her call. She did imply that she may be back, to work in the administration, as she did once, after Bahrain, but given how she sounded when she said it, I would not bet on it. Ward chose, purposefully, Hydra over us. Melinda...just decided that she does not care anymore. There's some difference."

"Here you go about that man again. Is he really that important?"

"When we first captured him after the Centipede situation I thought that there might still be some inherent goodness left in him, and that he would try to cooperate for the sake of redemption, at least. I was wrong. Whatever goodness there is, whatever anything there is, it is all buried under insanity – if we ever capture him alive, and I would not bet on it, I will try to help him – with T.A.H.I.T.I., but I would not bet on it. He is too far gone for now, and neither Hunter nor Morse is inclined to be gentle with him, for obvious reasons."

Natasha held her tongue in regards to the last bit. She did know Morse back in the old days, before the Hydra uprising, she knew that the blonde woman was good... but not as good as tended to think... and that her life partner was probably the same way: almost as good as he thought that he was. Between that partially misplaced confidence, and Grant Ward's current tactics of misdirection, Natasha wasn't certain as to who would win – but she wasn't in the right place to tell Coulson this anymore; maybe Fury was, but Fury wasn't here right now.

Bastard.

"But this has nothing to do with May," Coulson continued. "She is sane; she just took a look around, realized that she was not the person she once was, or thought that she was, and didn't handle it very well. Personally, I thought that it was good for her-"

"That she was becoming more, uh, maternal?"

"Yes – but perhaps I was wrong; that's what Melinda implied. She told me that she did it only because she thought that I wanted her to do so, and if I didn't – she wouldn't."

"That's not how she told it."

"I know. She was not in a very good emotional place, not since the whole Li Shi incident, and at that moment it showed. I told her that if she did not want to, she did not have to – among other things, and she took it all to the max and just left. She was, or is, an important part of the team, and my friend, but it does not seem that she wants to be either, not anymore, not at the moment. You talked to her – does it sound as if she is coming back?"

"No," Natasha shakes her head and gets back up. "Sorry about that, BTW."

"Don't," Coulson also gets up and shakes the ex-agent's hand. "You and Barton aren't coming back either, now would you?"

"Sorry, but Bruce still isn't a big fan of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Barton too has retired – to his farm," Natasha says with a chuckle. "Maybe it's the zeitgeist, director – it's against S.H.I.E.L.D. and all..."

"Maybe," is all that Coulson replies, and Natasha leaves his office – the same way that she came.


End file.
